Even More Improvements to the Communication System! Pt. 1

Two months ago, we introduced a new messaging system that made it possible to communicate with TeamPages on the go. As awesome as that features is, we’re not done improving our communication tools just yet!

In this blog post, we’ll examine a new feature that allows you to send a direct message to collected form results in a click of a button. Then in a subsequent blog, we’ll take a closer look at the new tracking feature that makes it possible to track players that have read your message.

Before we dive into this feature, we need to understand what forms do on TeamPages. A form is a custom page accessible in the ‘FORM MANAGER’ section of your team, club or league settings menu. A form’s primary job is to collect results. For example, many teams, clubs and leagues use forms to collect payments or gather players contact information.

As great as forms are for collecting results, it wasn’t always easy for managers to contact players who have completed a form. In the past, you would have to take all the email addresses collected by a form and send a message to them manually. As you can imagine this process was tedious and prone to mistakes. To solve this issue, we’ve added a one click button that sends a message to players who have completed a form.

Let’s take a closer look at this feature in a step by step tutorial.

(Note: In this demonstration we’ll be using a team. That being said, you can do everything that this tutorial outlines using a club or a league)

Step 1: Creating New Form

Click on the ‘SETTINGS’ link (indicated by 1 on the screenshot below) on your team’s page. Once the ‘TEAM SETTINGS’ page is loaded, click on the ‘FORM MANAGER’ (indicated by 2 on the screenshot below) in the settings sub menu. This will take you to the ‘FORM MANAGER’ page from where you can create a new form. Press on the ‘ADD’ link (indicated by 3 on the screenshot below) to create a new form.

Continuing from the step above, we’re now redirected to the ‘CUSTOMIZE YOUR FORM’ page (see screenshot below). This page allows you to create and modify your form. For our purposes the form will only have two email fields, but you are welcome to add any other fields that your form might require. When you are satisfied with your form, click on the ‘CONTINUE TO NEXT STEP’ green button (indicated by 2 on the screenshot below)

Step 2: Publishing your form

Customize your form until you reach ‘STEP 5: PREVIEW AND PUBLISH’ (see screenshot below). On this page click on the ‘PUBLISH FORM’ green button (indicated by 1 on the screenshot below) to publish your form.

Congratulations, you have published your form! Your form is now live and can be accessed by other users using the form’s link (indicated by 1 on the screenshot below). Even though your form is published, it’s not collecting any results so, users will not be able to submit any information just yet. To make your form collect results, click on the ‘Collecting Results’ bubble (indicated by 2 on the screenshot below).

Step 3: Creating dummy results

In this step, we’ll take a role of a player that decided to submit their contact information to our created form. Begin by clicking on the form’s link from the step above (indicated by 1 on the screenshot above). Depending on number of fields you’ve added, you should see a form that looks something like the screenshot below. To create our dummy result, we’ll fill in both email fields with two different emails (indicated by 1 on the screenshot below). Once both emails are filled in, click on the green submit button (indicated by 2 on the screenshot below). We’ve just created a form result that can be accessible using the ‘RESULTS’ link in ‘FORM MANAGER’ settings area (see screenshot above).

Step 4: Sending a Message

At this point, we want to send a message to email addresses that we’ve submitted in step 3. Begin this process, by going back to the ‘FORM MANAGER’ settings page. Once you arrive there, click on the ‘MESSAGE’ link (indicated by 1 on the screenshot below).

The ‘MESSAGE’ link from the screenshot above will take you to a familiar new message page (see screenshot below). A more observant reader might notice that there is already a recipient added to this message. This is your form recipient. By default you are sending a message to all email addresses that the form has collected. However, you can adjust bubbles and send the message only to a particular email field (indicated by 1 on the screenshot below). Likewise, you can add another recipient to the message by typing their name in the ‘To:’ field. (Note: You cannot add another form as recipient )

Our recipients are ready and it’s time to fill in the message’s title and body (indicated by 2 on the screenshot below). When you are done composing your message, click on the save button to send the message (indicated by 3 on the screenshot below).

Step 5: Verification

Let’s verify that the message was sent correctly to all submitted emails from step 3.

Hooray! Each email address has received the demo message.

Some Possible Gotchas:

You can only send a message to a form that has an email address field.

Users can reply to the form’s message using their mail client. However, only the message sender will be able to access the form’s message and all associated message replies on TeamPages.

This concludes the first part of the series that examines new communication features. Join us for the next part as we showcase the new tracking message read status feature. Click here to read Part 2